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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Light as a Feather Raspberry Chocolate Tart

I love raspberries, especially with cakes and pastries. They lent an aromatic tangy flavour to the sweet dessert, making the overall taste light and refreshing. For this chocolate tart, the lightness does not come from the raspberries, surprisingly ... it is the chocolate mousse and whipped cream!

This chocolate tart recipe was adapted from Angela's lighter chocolate tart (BBC Good Food, Asian Edition, Sep 2012). Recently, I was hooked on Good Food magazine... love the layout, beautiful pictures, and lots of recipes, tips and ideas. And so while flipping through the pages, this chocolate tart recipe caught my attention. The original is a calories/fat-reduced chocolate tart, without any whipped cream or raspberries toppings. But since I have two punnets of fresh raspberries sitting in my fridge for a few days then, I better clear them out quickly.

1) Rub flour and butter together until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Sift in cocoa powder and icing sugar. Mix well before stirring in the corn oil, followed by egg yolk and rum, until the dough comes together. If the mixture is too dry, add 1 tablespoon cold water. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and chill in fridge for 30 minutes.

[Note: Do not over-mix or knead the dough. Quickly combine all the pastry ingredient together to form a dough]

2) Roll out the dough into a thin sheet (bigger than the tart pan) and cover the dough sheet over the tart pan. Fit and trim the pastry, prick the base with a fork and chill for 15 minutes in fridge.

3) Blind bake the pastry base for 15 minutes in a preheated oven at 190C. Remove cover foil/beans and bake further for 10 minutes or till base is cooked. Set aside to cool.

4) Filling: Warm up the whipping cream and pour over the dark chocolate. Stir till chocolate is completely melted. Set aside to cool before mixing in the orange liquor. Fold 1/4 portion of whipped cream in (B) to the chocolate (keep remaining whipped cream in fridge till ready to use).

5) Combine egg whites and brown sugar in a bowl and place over a pot of simmering water (without touching the base of the bowl). Beat the egg whites gently for about 1 to 2 minutes (careful not to cook it!). Remove the bowl from the hot water and whisk the egg whites to stiff peak.[Note: You can skip the step of placing the bowl of egg whites over the simmering water if you are comfortable with consuming raw eggs]

6) Fold 1/3 of the whites into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the remaining whites.

7) Spoon the chocolate filling into the tart shell. Chill in the fridge for an hour to partially set the chocolate. Remove the tart from fridge, spoon or pipe the whipped cream over the chocolate mixture and top with fresh raspberries. Chill in the fridge for another two hours before serving.

Hi Eileen. Thanks for visiting my blog. Do you mean those ready-to-use whipped cream? I have not tried that before, so I can't really tell what is the capacity of each can. For folding into the chocolate, you may want to try using 3 parts melted chocolate to one part whipped cream. Fold, then see if that is the consistency that you like. If necessary, fold in a little more. For the whipped topping, you can just use directly from the can. Hope this helps.